Prepositions indicate relationships between words and between things. They are often concerned with spatial and temporal relations; expressing, for example, that something is ‘below’, ‘in’ or ‘with’. As discussed in previous chapters, a major trope in Western philosophy and science has been the presumption of existence as comprised of substance (or substances) that manifest certain properties. Nouns are envisaged as best indicating the substantive element, while adjectives have been deployed to describe the (secondary) properties of substance. The work of Deleuze, Dewey and Whitehead has been offered as a means of avoiding such presuppositions through an emphasis on the activity of verbs and the qualities of existence, as expressed through the adverbial. This chapter will further such arguments by turning to another element of language that has not figured in philosophy, namely prepositions. As Whitehead puts it: ‘The taint of Aristotelian Logic has thrown the whole emphasis of metaphysical thought upon substantives and adjectives, to the neglect of prepositions’ (Whitehead 1933: 356).

For Whitehead, one of the most important prepositions is ‘with’, and its associated characteristic of ‘withness’ (Whitehead 1978: 62 and passim). ‘For instance, we see the contemporary chair, but we see it with our eyes; and we touch the contemporary chair, but we touch it with our hands’ (Whitehead 1978: 62, emphasis in original). This mention of ‘eyes’ and ‘hands’ and their importance for sense-perception signals another neglected element in Western philosophy, with its focus on questions of the mind, thought and consciousness, namely the body. Yet in everyday life the existence of our bodies is important, ongoing and unquestioned; as Whitehead jocularly remarks: ‘No one ever says, Here am I, and I have brought my body with me’ (Whitehead 1938: 156). Nevertheless, the body has been ignored in much of Western philosophy.